4) EDUMACATE YOURSELF AT THE MUSEUM OF SCIENCE
Here’s a handy rule of thumb. Fossil fuels = bad. Fossils = awesome. And the collection of human specimens on display at the Museum of Science, from Taung Child to Peking Man, are tangible reminders of a time long ago (some bones are seven million years old), when global warming was less a concern than was saber-toothed-tiger attacks. Then flash-forward to the present day with the alarming photo exhibit Double Exposure: Aerial Photos of Glaciers Then and Now, in which photojournalist David Arnold offers updated versions of photos, shot between the ’30s and the ’60s, taken of various icy mountains and by the museum’s founding director, Bradford Washburn. If those now-naked peaks aren’t enough to make you curb your carbon spewing, nothing will.

INSIDE THE TEDXDIRIGO CONFERENCE | September 14, 2011 I arrived at TEDxDirigo on September 10 feeling rather less than confident about the state of world. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 — and the awful decade that unspooled from that sky-blue morning — was on my mind.